A developer who desires to build an application generally will rely on one or more application development tools to generate source code for the application. Although source code can be entered manually in text form, much conventional application development makes use of more sophisticated authoring tools, packages or suites that, in addition to allowing text entry, provide options to aid the code authoring process.
For example, an application development tool may provide a graphical user interface whereby a developer can select common or predefined source code elements representing objects, classes, procedures, scripts, and the like or templates or frameworks for entering the same. An application development tool can support entry of source code elements drawn to specific features of a particular programming language and/or execution environment.
ADOBE® FLEX® is an increasingly popular development environment that makes use of the ACTIONSCRIPT™ programming language to define mmxl files that are complied for execution by ADOBE® FLASH® or AIR™ (all available from Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif.).
This and other execution environments may allow for an application that handles user input and output based on a plurality of defined states while relying on data resources operating independently from the application as the ultimate source (and/or destination) of data used by the application. Use of these and other execution frameworks can present coding and other development challenges.